Horrible woman. Anyone heard of her?

In 1999, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a tenured English professor at Syracuse University, a skeptic of all things Christianity, and in a committed lesbian relationship. Her academic specialty was Queer Theory, a postmodern form of gay and lesbian studies.
Today Butterfield is a mother of four, a homemaker, and wife of a Presbyterian pastor named Kent. They live in Durham, North Carolina.

She speaks like she was completely and utterly brainwashed.
"Leftist lesbian partner" sounds like propaganda.

Right. If I was a journalist I would try to track down some of her Syracuse colleagues and the ex girlfriend and see what the REAL story is. Maybe she had a mental breakdown and wasn't going to get tenure, etc.

Something about it feels off. And the undertone of the story is that she really isn't as converted as she's leading us to believe.
She had a nice life. Why did she leave?

I'm curious if anybody knows her either.
Obviously, this Christian rag is only going to show her "happy ending."

She's not on Facebook.

If you google her, there's nothing but one-sided accounts.

If she was bisexual, it's be better if she attributed it to that rather than Jesus.
People in relationships often take on the characteristics of those they are dating at the expense of their own personality.

"After my tenure book was published, I used my post to advance the understandable allegiances of a leftist lesbian professor. My life was happy, meaningful, and full. My partner and I shared many vital interests: aids activism, children's health and literacy, Golden Retriever rescue, our Unitarian Universalist church, to name a few. Even if you believed the ghost stories promulgated by Robertson and his ilk, it was hard to argue that my partner and I were anything but good citizens and caregivers. The GLBT community values hospitality and applies it with skill, sacrifice, and integrity."

A lot of people who spend their lives in universities are nuts. And extreme people just want to be extreme, doesn't matter what "side" or cause.

Is she related to Evelyn 'Champagne' King or Julia Butterfly Hill?

Her name is fabulous.

Can't find much mention beyond the Christian sites.

This to be made up. No one would actually have a name like that.

Martha Dinwiddie Butterfield, former First Lady

She sounds like a nice woman who is deeply unhappy.

I don't get at all the OP's idea that she's a horrible woman--she has nothing but nice things to say about lesbians. The conversion is disturbing, but it's her life.

Do you really want a nutbag like her in the LGBT community?
I say let the heteros have her, we have enough crazy as it is.

[quote] A lot of people who spend their lives in universities are nuts
Really?

Dr.%20Amy%20Boom%20Boom%20Boom%20Bishop

A drag queen should take her name on "in tribute".

I think crazy people don't really have a sexuality, though they talk about it a lot

Holly Near did this. So did Tom Robinson.

Tom Robinson was never all that "glad to be gay" to start with. His song was satire.
Holly Near was clearly bisexual all along.

There is nothing in mainstream American Presbyterianism that justifies or explains the pitch of this woman's statements. Her apparent decision that Christianity is incompatible with being gay is her own twist, and her determination to live like a straight person is just an indication of her personal issues, under the cloak of a false security.
And that she offers herself to the radical Xtian media shows she is both inauthentic and a cunt.

She went from being anti-Christian to the point that she couldn't even talk about it to fully embracing it to where it chnaged her life and orientation? Sounds pathological.

Right.

She really does come across as a complete freak. As someone above noted I feel bad for her partner. If someone I knew looked at me and said, "What if we are all going to hell?" I think I would crack up laughing. Really?

lesbian%20academic

Her story about her transgendered friend J is completely confusing.

[quote]Tom Robinson was never all that "glad to be gay" to start with. His song was satire.
Obviously, in hindsight.
Fooled us.

lake of fire!!

er

See, Christians and fundies have ESTs too.
This. Never. Happened.

No, it clearly actually did; she's crazy, but she exists.

The answer is obvious. A committed activist womon broke her heart, and this is her psychotic revenge.

The man who tried to convert her is the man she marries. And she says the conversion was a trainwreck. (Did they strap her to a chair and hold her eyes open a la "A Clockwork Orange"?)
There's more to the story.

Oh, good catch, r36! I didn't realize the 'conversion man' became her husband.... hmmmmmm.

Add radio asswipe Michael Savage to that list, r36.

I'd like to add Michael Savage to the list of people who catch permanent laryngitis.

I would like

I know Rosaria and Kent (who met her after her conversion). She's the real deal. Do you have the courage to actually read her book?

Anonymous

Lesbian bed death done this to her.

I don't want to hear from her. No thanks.

I'm a Syracuse alumnus from a few years later and I'd never heard of her. I thought she might be totally fake, but I did find this article, amongst others through the SU website.
So she's real. Maybe a brain tumor?

Wonder if she is right? And we're going to some horrible place of torment for eternity.

Frightened

Oh good, the freepers at R41 and R46 have discovered this thread. No real gay man on DL would be frightened of hell.

Hell is freeper fucks like R41 and R46, both of whom have swallowed the Kool Aid which wiped out what was left of their intelligence and ability to think.

She still pings. Hehe.

real deal in what way?

The "real deal"? She's a bigger phoney than Clifford Irving ever was.

How is it so incredibly hard to believe that someone can be gay and happy, and then come to a point in their life where they are now straight and happy? The opposite happens all the time. No one that is criticizing her is mentioning having read her book, so you don't have any points or know any of her reasoning. If a straight person came out as gay and all the comments were "she's crazy/fake/what a cunt/etc." people would be jumping over each other to defend the person.

[quote]How is it so incredibly hard to believe that someone can be gay and happy, and then come to a point in their life where they are now straight and happy? The opposite happens all the time.
No, the opposite pretty much never happens. People are closeted and pretending to be straight (and usually not very happy at all) and then come to a point in their life where they decide to come out. That is what really happens.

It's the Christianity aspect, R52.
Plus the weird insistence on her being a "leftist lesbian."

She is no longer DARK-SIDED!

Marguerite

I guarantee she has never read the Bible, because if she had, she would never come to the conclusion it was antigay. Furthermore, the Bible is such a thick dense load of crap there is no way she read it "multiple times" in one year.

I feel sorry for her former STUDENTS.
Imagine being lectured to by someone so unstable and unreliable... about your own sexuality.
She even has the nerve to describe herself as "queer" in the present day in the interview.
Bullshit.

urf

So she was ALREADY A CHRISTIAN in a progressive, LGBT-friendly church, but somehow decided (or was convinced) that it was the wrong kind of Christianity.
I agree, there had to be something that triggered her self-loathing enough for her to run back into the closet (to many strained, tortured metaphors). And, it seems as though she admits she still feels attracted to women.
Frightening.

"Do you have the courage to actually read her book?"
Courage?
She was a mouthy queer who disseminated her shit - then she had a conversion, and STILL wants people to listen to her shit.
10 years down the line - how do we know she won't have returned to her roots, and STILL be wanting people to listen to her shit?

I wonder how many people are there like this in the world...

But 'queer' doesn't mean gay anymore, so it's not like she converted.

Good for her.

Please elaborate, r64.

Just goes to prove the power of a good dick. It can totally do that to you. It can completely change the way you see yourself and the world. I should know.

Read her book and it might make sense

Hopefully few, R62.

If ever there was an EST...

Well, obviously the poor thing had never been to a Talbots before.
a

Amanda%20Swansdown%20Pepperidge%2C%20Mrs.

Would this WERE an EST....

It is kind of sad that you were all questioning if she is real or if she had some kind of brain tumor.
Her name as a prof was Rosaria Champagne. Her book was "The Politics of Survivorship: Incest, Women's Literature, and Feminist Theory."
If you read the book, you will see that she is not insane. Just be happy for her, not so mean and defensive.

Anonymous

Stockholm Syndrome. She was probably kidnapped and brainwashed. As an adult, if she's not complaining, no one will question it.

i agree she is real.
i disagree she is sane.

It can happen. I'm talking more about the "became a fundamentalist" aspect, more than the "became ex-lesbian".
I'm reminded of Michelle Shocked, who was more progressive/leftist when she started out, and now look at her - a fundie damaged basket case who's torpedoed her own career. And to a lesser extent I'm reminded of Bob Dylan, who shocked his fans in the late 70s by taking up not only born-again Christianity, but an unusually dour, severe form of it. Bob has mellowed out over time but it was a crashing disappointment for his fans back in those years.
Sounds like this woman has some strong attraction to rigid fundamentalist thinking and emotion. The vision of hell, for example, that horrified her and yet obviously seduced her. That kind of vision and thinking is, admittedly, not a central quality in UU churches and academic lesbian circles. You can't have it all in this life -- maybe some core part of her longed for that severity, that singular intensity of religious vision. I'm just glad I know my own inner terrain well enough to know, that would never be me.

It obviously DID happen. She's a mentally ill mess.

She sounds nuts. Someone must know her or her ex-partner.

...it sounds like r72 might...

[quote]So she was ALREADY A CHRISTIAN in a progressive, LGBT-friendly church
Unitarians aren't exactly Christian. Their beliefs are non-dogmatic, and many followers practice syncretic blends of other religions including Judiasm, Buddhism and Paganism. There are even agnostic and athiest Unitarians.

Be happy for her? Is this stil a gay board? I don't fucking understand a straight person on this thread. why are you here? We don't want anti-gay people on this site.
Why do I have to say this? You are not wanted in the straight world because you are pathetic. We don't want you here either.
DONT GO WHERE YOU ARE NOT WANTED.

Who cares? So irrelevant.

She says she's straight because "closet case" doesn't have same that air of respectability.

This kind of situation gives me the willies, like soldiers giving blankets to native Americans or black men receiving free treatment at Tuskegee. But that does not mean she is a victim of spiritual abuse. The only consistence in evolution is variation, so while not common or typical, it is possible.
It also shows how large the sample size of alternative lifestyle people there are in America that general statistics would cough up this wing-nut.
I wonder if her converter/pastor/husband would recommend marrying a lesbian to his sons. "Well boys, you got a lot more...time on your hands!"

Fey

I had Rosaria as a professor at SU back in 96/97. She is in fact real.
Seeing this transformation is rather shocking and unnerving. She was a strong, educated and inspirational role model to young, queer, academic women.
The bottom line is if she's found happiness, good for her, though I disagree with her believing now that homosexuality is a sin, I applaud her beliefs that homophobia is also a sin.

Dollars to doughnuts she is supremely unhappy and said what she said because someone paid her.

She and Kent don't have real jobs. Ministry is for someone who doesn't want to work.

She probably wanted to be a professional gay until she found out that was the smallest job category in the nation, but faker for Jesus is one of the biggest!

In the piece linked she doesn't say being gay is a sin. I think she only focuses on herself & how she started reading the Bible, etc.

Can we please stop using ableism to criticize queerphobia? Many of us disabled and mentally ill people are also queer, and using insults like nuts, crazy, and insane ignores us and perpetuates ableism in the LGBTQ community.

Morton%20G

I think Champagne Butterfield is a great name.

R41, what are you saying? Was she bisexual or confused about her gender orientation? Does she think homosexuality is a sin?

She probably did the complete about-face simply to escape Syracuse. Anyone who's been there will agree.

If she read the Bible, she would know it isn't gay. She's a fake.

People who study queer-theory/women's studies are generally insufferable.

She still looks lesbo.

The%20husband

That's impossible, r52. She could, however, be bisexual and happy with a woman partner then and a male partner, now. I've seen so many men and women who call themselves straight when with the opposite sex, and gay when with the same sex. And I don't mean just happen to meet a nice man or woman but "swear off" the other sex for a period in your life, doesn't make you not bi.